• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.

Tinto Talks #32 - 9th of October 2024

Welcome to another Tinto Talks , the Happy Wednesday, where we talk about our upcoming, unannounced, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious game with the codename Project Caesar.

Today we will talk about what happens when some of the pops in your country are not entirely convinced of its greatness.

Rebel Factions

There are five different categories that a rebel faction can belong to.
  • Nationalist, for all independence movements.
  • Pretender, for when they want another ruler.
  • Slave, for when they want to be free.
  • Religious, if a different religious group they want independence, else they want to convert the country
  • Estate, for when they are really unhappy and want their society to change.

patriots.png

A fair number of pops, and 12 locations, this could be a challenge..

Pops and Rebel Factions
Now let's go back to Tinto Talks #17, where we first mentioned that Pops have satisfaction, and when that is low enough a pop will join a rebel faction. The levels at which a pop joins or leaves a faction have some different factors, but the way to keep a pop from joining a rebel is to make sure they are satisfied with life.

Now, let's take a look at some Sardinian peasants in Cagliari, which has recently been conquered by Aragon, just before the start of the game.

sardinians.png

For some reason people tend to be a bit upset when conquered.

Sadly we can not make the commoners estate more happy in Aragon, as they are already at 100% satisfaction, so the +25% bonus is the maximum we can get. Otherwise to make the estates happy you can always reduce taxes or grant them more privileges.

One obvious solution here is to make them integrated which would reduce the conquered penalty of 50% to 10%, however that will take about 25 years, which may not be quick enough to avoid an uprising. If we build a castle we could add another 10% of satisfaction, and we could also station an army there to keep the peasants in line.

As they lack access to wine and legumes, and currently trade in a muslim market, we could try to deny market access to Al-Jazair, and they would be slightly happier as the wine would be easier to get from an Italian market.

All of this would make the satisfaction positive at least, but we need to get it above 29.74%, which is not feasible right now.

join_reb.png

A stable country has a higher threshold for rebels to join..

Sadly we can not yet use the Pacify Population cabinet action which you can get in the Age of Absolutism which reduces the threshold for joining rebels by 5-10% depending on the competence of your monarch and cabinet.

If we go back to rebel factions again, they have a progress value, where when it reaches 100%, and here the rebels, which will take about 23 years, so the uprising is likely to happen before the integration is done, unless you can weaken their power, or increase control over their territories so they get less money.

rebel_progress.png

Sadly Sardinia is a bit too far away for a road from Barcelona..

So what happens when a rebel faction has progressed to 100% then? Well, one of two things will happen, either there will be a civil war or a revolt. First the rebel faction forms a new country, with a relevant name, and takes ownership of the locations where it has a strong support.

Revolts
If they are a rebel type that wants to be independent, then they will start a revolt, which is almost a war where the defender can re-annex any revolter without further aggressive expansion and can always afford the peace cost.

If the culture of these revolting countries is from a country that exists on the map, they will call in the country they used to be a part of it into the revolt, and if they join, and the war is won, the revolter will become a part of the country that they belonged to in the past.


Civil War
These are started by pretenders, some religious rebels, or estate type rebels. Civil Wars work differently than other wars in that you do not have to negotiate a peace. In Civil War, as soon as you would have taken control of a location from a siege or occupation, the location would immediately flip ownership of that location instead.

This means that Civil Wars are almost always fought to the bitter end, and only one country can survive.


End of a Civil War.
As this system has a few similarities with the Civil War systems of Imperator Rome, we have to alleviate some concerns here. In Project Caesar there is no Game Over if you lose a Civil War, but instead you have the option to continue as the winning side. One thing to consider here is that the winner will have different rulers, maybe a different religion, perhaps a new government type, dramatic changes to societal values, reforms and/or privileges.

After all, if the peasants revolt and win, you will not keep your glorious full serfdom monarchy as it once was.

civil_war_lost.png

You don’t have to continue, you can pick the other option for the game over screen!



Next week we will talk more about Diplomacy, and that will for most of you be something you already are aware of, but it will list quite a few new aspects.
 
  • 257Like
  • 90Love
  • 11
  • 7
  • 4
  • 1Haha
Reactions:
The problem is that nationalism is being used here for ease of understanding so everyone knows what is being talked about. Is nationalism a modern idea born from the liberal revolutions and the birth of the nation state to tie a group of people with common cultural traits to the idea that they have a right to their own state? Yes. Does that mean that before nationalism in the rationalist, liberal and modern sense there was no sense of common belonging, patriotism, and political community and shared homeland? Of course not. Patriotism and shared cultural heritage and homeland has always existed. It just was not tied to a specific state because the state did not exist. At least the modern state, the state that nationalism comes from, so to speak.

But calling it patriotism would be weird because patriotism has too much of a good connotation to be associated with the risk of revolt in the game. Separatism? Yeah fine but can be confusing. I think nationalism while not 100% precise, it does represent a common understanding of a sentiment that very much existed at that time.

The problem is not so much to call it nationalism. But to give that nationalism malus an effect it did not have in real life. Before the modern nations and the idea of nation states, people did not care very much what kingdom they lived under or where their king was from so much as whether the kingdom and king they were under respected their culture and their rights, liberties and privileges. That is why you don't see many separatist uprising in the first half of the game's timelines, only when triggered by a ruler who persecuted specific culture, mistreated them, try to erase them or movilize them or violated their local customs and laws. That is why you could have multicultural kingdoms like Angevin Kingdom, Spanish Empire, the HRE or the Austrian Empire. The game regretably does not represent these local cultures rights and privileges and local laws, and therefore those conflicts do not exist in this game, so the only way to represent frictions and conflicts between cultures is through this nationalism malus.

But to end this post and reiterate, I don't think the name is problematic, people are just being pedantic to sound smart. Name it what you will but represents something that has always existed.
It is not just pedantic to not want to call this nationalist, it is inaccurate for exactly what you say. The term nationalism has historical weight and, as I said, is not just a bottom-up phenomenon.
This game wants to portray these historical movements, so it should do so with care.

Especially so when the rise of nationalism could fall into the game’s timeframe, and could therefore be simulated differently, with separatism as one of its ways.

I don’t understand why you disagree. It also doesn’t have to be called patriotic, it can be called separatist or particularist.
 
  • 1
  • 1Like
Reactions:
Do people always hate being conquered by a third party?

So like, Spain takes a province from France, France gets it back, obviously the French people in the province are happy.

But what if Granada gets taken by Spain and then the Ottomans conquer it. They're not Andalucian in culture, but I'm sure the main pop in Granada would much rather have them than Spain as the ruler.

Or, as happened in the early Muslim conquests, Coptic Egyptians who were facing severe restrictions under the Byzantines were fairly open to the Muslim conquerors who let them practice as they wished (at least at first).

Point being, there were definitely historical cases where being conquered by some 3rd party (i.e. not your own people) was viewed as a good thing.
I would say that this is covered by these two lines on the panel
1728657087289.png


Will the "conquered" penalty always be the same amount? So if I conquer pops of my own religion and ethnicity, perhaps they would be less mad about being conquered?
Again I would hope that your ethnicity would have a good view of your ethnicity, and good tolerance of your religion. As Ispil mentioned "The "conquest" separatism is only applied to unaccepted cultures."
 
  • 5Like
Reactions:
What is the population threshold for a revolt to occur ? If there is only 1000 people of a specific culture I wonder if the y can rise as separatists/nationalists revolt.
What percentage of the unhappy population will be converted into an army ?

If we can switch side at the end of a civil war, we can simply let the other side win purposefully and sabotage our own side. I think it's a gateway to exploit.
 
Welcome to another Tinto Talks , the Happy Wednesday, where we talk about our upcoming, unannounced, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious game with the codename Project Caesar.

Today we will talk about what happens when some of the pops in your country are not entirely convinced of its greatness.

Rebel Factions

There are five different categories that a rebel faction can belong to.
  • Nationalist, for all independence movements.
  • Pretender, for when they want another ruler.
  • Slave, for when they want to be free.
  • Religious, if a different religious group they want independence, else they want to convert the country
  • Estate, for when they are really unhappy and want their society to change.

View attachment 1199240
A fair number of pops, and 12 locations, this could be a challenge..

Pops and Rebel Factions
Now let's go back to Tinto Talks #17, where we first mentioned that Pops have satisfaction, and when that is low enough a pop will join a rebel faction. The levels at which a pop joins or leaves a faction have some different factors, but the way to keep a pop from joining a rebel is to make sure they are satisfied with life.

Now, let's take a look at some Sardinian peasants in Cagliari, which has recently been conquered by Aragon, just before the start of the game.

View attachment 1199241
For some reason people tend to be a bit upset when conquered.

Sadly we can not make the commoners estate more happy in Aragon, as they are already at 100% satisfaction, so the +25% bonus is the maximum we can get. Otherwise to make the estates happy you can always reduce taxes or grant them more privileges.

One obvious solution here is to make them integrated which would reduce the conquered penalty of 50% to 10%, however that will take about 25 years, which may not be quick enough to avoid an uprising. If we build a castle we could add another 10% of satisfaction, and we could also station an army there to keep the peasants in line.

As they lack access to wine and legumes, and currently trade in a muslim market, we could try to deny market access to Al-Jazair, and they would be slightly happier as the wine would be easier to get from an Italian market.

All of this would make the satisfaction positive at least, but we need to get it above 29.74%, which is not feasible right now.

View attachment 1199242
A stable country has a higher threshold for rebels to join..

Sadly we can not yet use the Pacify Population cabinet action which you can get in the Age of Absolutism which reduces the threshold for joining rebels by 5-10% depending on the competence of your monarch and cabinet.

If we go back to rebel factions again, they have a progress value, where when it reaches 100%, and here the rebels, which will take about 23 years, so the uprising is likely to happen before the integration is done, unless you can weaken their power, or increase control over their territories so they get less money.

View attachment 1199243
Sadly Sardinia is a bit too far away for a road from Barcelona..

So what happens when a rebel faction has progressed to 100% then? Well, one of two things will happen, either there will be a civil war or a revolt. First the rebel faction forms a new country, with a relevant name, and takes ownership of the locations where it has a strong support.

Revolts
If they are a rebel type that wants to be independent, then they will start a revolt, which is almost a war where the defender can re-annex any revolter without further aggressive expansion and can always afford the peace cost.

If the culture of these revolting countries is from a country that exists on the map, they will call in the country they used to be a part of it into the revolt, and if they join, and the war is won, the revolter will become a part of the country that they belonged to in the past.


Civil War
These are started by pretenders, some religious rebels, or estate type rebels. Civil Wars work differently than other wars in that you do not have to negotiate a peace. In Civil War, as soon as you would have taken control of a location from a siege or occupation, the location would immediately flip ownership of that location instead.

This means that Civil Wars are almost always fought to the bitter end, and only one country can survive.


End of a Civil War.
As this system has a few similarities with the Civil War systems of Imperator Rome, we have to alleviate some concerns here. In Project Caesar there is no Game Over if you lose a Civil War, but instead you have the option to continue as the winning side. One thing to consider here is that the winner will have different rulers, maybe a different religion, perhaps a new government type, dramatic changes to societal values, reforms and/or privileges.

After all, if the peasants revolt and win, you will not keep your glorious full serfdom monarchy as it once was.

View attachment 1199244
You don’t have to continue, you can pick the other option for the game over screen!



Next week we will talk more about Diplomacy, and that will for most of you be something you already are aware of, but it will list quite a few new aspects.
I love the new approach to civil wars. One small tidbit: The flintlocks on the artwork look really weird, the locks are a mess. I know that’s just some niche aesthetic thing, but it would be nice if you could correct that :)
IMG_0091.jpeg
 
  • 3Like
  • 1
Reactions:
i think being able to continue even loosing to rebels is a good option, although it should really be disabled on some higher difficulty like ironman, or it could be something very exploitable
 
no, that would be very very awkward.
Maybe you could give the player a decision after 20 years or so to make a truce with the rebels as the country is extremly tired of war and you can then decline and continue or accept where then a new country is formed with their controlled territory and both country claim each other. It may be awkward for both of them but after a few years they can fight it out again. Because if are rebels on a island for 20 years without any interference they sould be able to ask for peace with the option for the player to decline.
 
  • 2Like
Reactions:
Will there be a mechanic that decides if the rebels have weapons, cannons and artillery or just a bunch of peasants with pitchforks, I’d love a mechanic where they have to find a place full of weapons, also I noticed a status quo civil war can’t happen so I guess USA and confederate states of America can’t coexist after the civil war if it happens in project Caesar timeline
 
  • 1
Reactions:
The already highly* (The Ryukyu and Ainu very much had their own identity) unified state of Japan used Western ideas of nationalism and applied them to their own situation to very successfully mobilize its people without the strife seen elsewhere. However, cultural unity =/= nationalism.

See how Osterhammel in his book ‘The Transformation of the World’ CH.8 described Japan as having a separate path to nationalism as an example of what I mean.
No need to nerd out. This is very simple. Nation come from nacere, to be born, like nature. It's a roman term. It's a community bound by blood, in its most fundamental sense.

Nation is a holistic term. A mongol horde is a nation. An amazonan tribe is a nation. The Theban city state is a nation. When Tokugawa, Nobunaga etc. unified Japan, they were unifying their nation.

Nationhood is fundamental human nature. You are basically putting forward an outdated and anti-antropollogical view point. You are confusing a nation with state centralized structures that bypass traditional power brokers (church, merchants, nobles) and control a polity defined by language, religion, or a defined geographical area (an island).
 
  • 3
  • 1Like
Reactions:
I would say that this is covered by these two lines on the panel
View attachment 1200604


Again I would hope that your ethnicity would have a good view of your ethnicity, and good tolerance of your religion. As Ispil mentioned "The "conquest" separatism is only applied to unaccepted cultures."

I think there's something to be said about the "comparison" factor. Christian Egyptians wouldn't have preferred the Muslims if they weren't being persecuted by the Byzantines.

If Ottomans conquer Muslim Granada, it'd be a bit different than if Christians do it first and the Ottomans take those lands after.
 
I think that, if some rebels appear in locations that have forts, if this locations change control to the Rebel country, the fort should be occupied by you with the full garrison you left.

Maybe, rebels should only control part of the rebel core randomly. (Example, Sardinia rebels but Aragon has fort in “Cagliari” (if this location exist) with full garrison, then this location start Owned by Sardinia but occupied by Aragon. And also there are some probability // randomize that some locations of Sardinia are also occupied by Aragon at the start of the revolt, representing the confuse situation at start of revolts and civil war and that revolters are not going to succeed instantly
 
"Nationalism" is pretty anachronistic for at least most of this time period, surely "separatism" would fit better?

As for religious revolts, should their desires not depend more on how dominant they already are in a country? For instance if protestants make up 40% of the population, converting the country may seem quite realistic, whereas if they're a mere 5%, they probably wouldn't be very confident in being able to hold on to it and it would make more sense for them to want separation or religious liberty. (Perhaps during the initial reformation the higher enthusiasm could still make them push for less realistic goals)

Finally about civil wars, in previous games where territory was transferred on occupation it became very difficult to rack up warscore which could mean you had to occupy every last province, system, etc. even if it was some individual far off province, which could become quite tedious especially when the war was by all means already won. Is this being addressed in some way so the AI actually capitulates and doesn't just keep existing in some one province colony?
 
  • 2Like
  • 1
Reactions:
We need peace-deals für Civil wars. At least there should be a truce without added change of Land, to freeze the conflict, when its a stalemate or if bigger threata are threatining both countries.
Frozen konflicts did happen. They even exist today and can shape a region, as they are the staging grounds for future wars as both sides collect allys to finish it once and for all.



Also nationalist rebels should not Join the biggest country, but instead they should rank them according to a mixture of proximity, market access, founding(who invested the most in them) and size. (of a preselected group with a fitting primary/accepted culture/religion)
 
I think there's something to be said about the "comparison" factor. Christian Egyptians wouldn't have preferred the Muslims if they weren't being persecuted by the Byzantines.
Which would be shown by going from a negative "Byzantine persecution of Christian" to at least a neutral "_Muslim_ tolerance of Christian" (where _Muslim_ is the unnamed country in your example)

If Ottomans conquer Muslim Granada, it'd be a bit different than if Christians do it first and the Ottomans take those lands after.
I am not really sure that Granada would like the conquering Ottomans more just because the Spaniard conquered them first. Sure they would like them better than being conquered by the Spaniards (which would be reflected in different values)
 
View attachment 1199242
A stable country has a higher threshold for rebels to join..

Sadly we can not yet use the Pacify Population cabinet action which you can get in the Age of Absolutism which reduces the threshold for joining rebels by 5-10% depending on the competence of your monarch and cabinet.
If I understand well, we have two thresholds. If the satisfaction of a pop is below the lowest, pop joins the rebels. If above the second, pop become loyal again.

1. What happens between the two threshold?
2. There's something I don't understand in the image above and its legend. Stability should be something positive for me otherwise why should I spend money to increase it? Having an high threshold isn't something good as it makes things easier for the pop to join the rebels. You mention that there is a cabinet action to lower it in the very next sentence.
3. For me the color code of the image should be reversed between positive and negative values.